America's War on Speech and the SHAC 7 Trialby David Sugar
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 6, 2005
(Revised and expanded June 7)

On
June 1st, they came to Trenton bearing the first amendment, placards of
mutilated animals, and chants. They include people who range from
ever-dangerous vegan teens to violent Manhattan insurance executives. Some
brought their toddlers, who no doubt were organizing a chemical weapons
attack. These were after all America's newest and most dangerously violent
hardcore #1 domestic terrorist threat: Animal Rights Activists. Seven
members of an Animal Rights group known as SHAC (Stop Huntington Animal
Cruelty) are on trial as "Animal Enterprise Terrorists," each facing 23
years imprisonment and perhaps a potential ticket for future Guantánamos,
all for the dangerous and violent act of publishing a web site!

These violent
terrorists are an orderly group. Mostly white, mainly middle class, these
terrorists could be mistaken for anyone, your neighbor, your friends, in
any suburban community in the U.S. They remain orderly even as police
bearing Kevlar armor place barricades in front of them. But the
government says these people are violent and extremely dangerous, in fact
the most violent and dangerous people in America today. The same
government that said there were WMDs in Iraq and still claims Saddam
Hussein and Osama were allies to promote a "revenge war."

What have these SHAC
activists done, you may wonder, to be labeled by the FBI as America's most
dangerous terrorist threat. Apparently it involves a lot of public
protesting and chants. We all know how dangerous speech can be. But here
is what they themselves say: "In 4 short years SHAC has brought one of the
worlds largest animal testing labs to its knees driving it $85 million
into debt, getting it kicked off the New York and London Stock Exchanges,
and making HLS a horrifying household name around the world."

The SHAC 7
defendants are actually a part of a specific group of animal rights
activists that explicitly targets Huntington Life Sciences (HLS), a
company that practices animal vivisection, through the use of a direct
action campaign against HLS, and those companies that do business with it.
The SHAC 7 defendants, the ones actually charged with terrorism, only ran
the advocacy web site which publishes information, and are not themselves
charged with participating in these direct actions.

The government
claims that SHAC promoted violence and terror on the organization’s web
site. The government claims the SHAC web site advocated targeting children
and promoted the spraying of cleaning fluid in a company workers face. The
government claims the SHAC web site promotes stalking and targeting of
individual victims. The government makes a great many claims about the
SHAC web site, many of which are taken out of context.

I actually have seen
the SHAC web site in the past, and I have reviewed and researched just a
few of the specific allegations. One of the allegations in fact refers to
claims in an article republished on the SHAC site from an animal research
company itself. Another claim I found only related to something being
reported in an article as having happened, and not something that was
being advocated. If the New York Times reports on a rape case, does
this mean the New York Times is guilty of advocating rape?

Indeed, the
government case, from what I can make of it is, is formed from innuendo
and articles taken completely out of context. Using these very same
methods, I could easily go through an activist site, like say the
Dissident Voice, and similarly claim that they advocate the violent
overthrow of the American government and assassination of the President.

In fact, the SHAC
web site and their publications offer careful advice on what are legally
permitted forms of protest and what are not. They only advocate that legal
methods be used. They do have articles and reports on other activities,
just like any activist web site that reports information or that publishes
articles. This is clearly a first amendment case.

SHAC activists as a
whole are actually a rather isolated sub-group of animal activists, as
they seem to only involve themselves in HLS related actions. They are
large enough to have their own publications, some of which I read, and
chapters in several countries. But I think their focused nature, their
general success through direct actions, and their near complete isolation,
even from other animal activists, let alone those involved in other areas,
is why the government choose to target them, rather than some other group.
The predator always tries to isolate and strike the stray animal from the
herd.

Perhaps their other
crime, and the reason they were specifically targeted for prosecution, was
from being successful against a company with very strong political
connections. HLS has been a strong lobbyist for the Animal Enterprise
Terrorism act, which is meant to criminalize the act of legitimate protest
against the profit making abilities of a corporation. In this
ill-conceived law, harming a corporation through civil disobedience and
lawful protest is now itself elevated to a terrorist act. Furthermore,
simply reporting on the actions and activities of people who engage in
legitimate protest and civil disobedience has also become a terrorist act,
and the basis for this prosecution of the First Amendment that began in
Trenton on June 1st.

If you are wondering
why those who run a web site are being charged with terrorism, rather than
the people actively engaged in "direct activism," so was I, until I read
some of their publications and their web site. They put a great deal of
effort into explaining what are legally permitted forms of protest and
direct action. It is possible a few of their younger members may have
strayed over that boundary, but I do not believe even this government
could make the case that vegan high school kids pulling pranks are a
terror threat.

But this case was
never about domestic terrorism. This case is about free speech and the
right to protest corporations. The indictment states that the seven are
alleged to have run a website that REPORTED ON protests aimed at
pressuring investors, stockbrokers and customers of the animal
experimentation facility Huntington Life Sciences to divest from the
facility. The indictment alleges the seven conspired to encourage the
disruption of commerce at HLS. Indeed, if we take what the government
interpretation of the AEP act at face value, to define domestic terrorism
as any third party action that limits commerce, whether criminal in method
or not, and no matter how peaceful, then perhaps one day, for example, a
Christian coalition group who choose to run a boycott campaign against a
company and their sponsors may also find themselves prosecuted as
terrorists. This case is a threat to the very freedoms of ALL Americans.

Considering the
significance of this trial, the lack of coverage not only in the national
press, but even in independent media outlets, is astounding. Well known
New York Documentary filmmaker Andy Roth, who has covered the SHAC group
since last year, also believes this trial is neither about Animal Rights
nor Animal Activism. "It’s a human rights issue, and about what precedent
this could set for other groups, like PETA or Greenpeace."

Given this lack of
coverage, and to see who these dangerous and violent domestic terrorists
are for myself, I went undercover and, using a highly sophisticated
investigative technique known as bumming a ride, I was able to penetrate
their organization. The domestic terrorists I traveled north with were in
fact so dangerous that, when confronted with missing their exit, they
briefly considered committing a terrorist act right in front of my eyes, a
U-turn. America can rest easier though, they choose to continue to the
next exit.

In the end, all I
can conclude is that the SHAC defendants, rather than being violent and
dangerous extremists, are really being charged and punished for successful
activism against a company through lawful means. And so the SHAC group
continues to protest and chant, every day of the trial, "One struggle, one
fight! Human freedom, animal rights!,” but is anyone listening who should
be?

David Sugar is
a founder and former Chief Technology Officer of Open Source Telecom Corporation
(www.ostel.com). He is also
the primary author for a number of packages that are part of the GNU project.